Design is alive and well in Prague. There seems to be a very strong street poster scene there and unlike in San Francisco, the posters are actually well designed. I am not sure if this is a function of the fact that most designers in California are busy at agencies doing web design or that Prague just happens to produce great print designers. Whatever the case may be, it was great to be able to walk around and observe my favorite design medium in it’s natural habitat: pasted up on walls and poles, wet, decaying, torn, and looking magnificent. The great part is that no one seems to be taking down older posters so in some places the posters were stacked almost two inches thick. Some of the front layers would be torn away exposing layer after layer of old posters beneath, amazing stuff.

After going though all the shots from Prague I realized how many I had to posters so I decided to split the post off into two parts. I will be posting the other shots from Prague tomorrow.

Caught this on the way out of the subway on my last day in Tokyo. Not quite an Otl Aicher caliber piece, but good nonetheless. (caveat: I color corrected it a bit to give it a more muted vibe….couldn’t resist)

I’ll be hosting a free (thanks to our gracious sponsors) workshop / talk in Stockholm during January. The workshop will focus on a lot of the concepts I covered in the the Barcelona and New York series along with some new ideas and a good dose of design theory. I usually do a lot of hands on work within Photoshop so you’re encouraged to bring a laptop if you want to follow along. There will be a full question and answer period at the end so come prepared if there are any specific concepts you’d like to discuss.

It should be a fun night, the event itself will last about 2 hours and afterwards we’ll move over to the hotel bar for some drinks and mingling. I’ll be bringing some prints from The Shop, but due to the distance I will be traveling for this one, bringing shirts won’t really be practical. Due to other limitations there will not be a live Tycho set, but I will be playing some new music and any questions you have about music are welcomed. Hope to see you all out!

"The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has rejected Taxi On the Dark Side’s poster as being “not suitable for all audiences.” … What’s offensive about this image? The detainee in the hood. Well, actually just the hood. An MPAA spokesman said: “We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration.” Welcome to the new age of censorship kids, it makes McCarthyism seem almost quaint."

Sickening to say the least. This is a well executed, poignant design and I don’t see how depicting a real world situation in this manner would be offensive to kids. More like "educational", but of course the MPAA isn’t exactly concerned with educating the youth, perhaps dumbing them down to the point of complete complacency, but certainly not educating.